[Lore]

I don't think we'll have to wait very long. There will be some pretty dramatic effects due to climate change well before mid century which will prove to be devastating to both the world economy and human life.

For instance, just my one example from a previous post, with regards to SLR affecting the 5.5 million people that live in the greater Miami area. It won't take 3 m of sea rise to make Miami the next Atlantis. It will be a ghost town long before that. The area is only about 6 ft. above sea level now, but the earth beneath the inhabited coastline is highly permeable. Already "king tides" are washing across the streets bordered by all those high rise condos and Art Deco facades. It is even now inundating the ground water and corroding the infrastructure. By 2030 people will be moving away in droves having lost all their property value. Like Detroit, only worse. Abandoned buildings, crumbling bridges and roads. A trillion dollars in assets suddenly worthless.

Now comes the problem, what to do with all those refugees? No jobs, no money, no prospects. Will they become squatters where they can find a place, breeding disease and hunger?

This of course will not be happening in an isolated bubble, but in other parts of the country along the coasts and around the world. And this is only SLR, what about chaotic weather events pushing the extremes of drought and floods? At the same time food and water scarcity will be high on every country's agenda.

In 2050 will there be plans drawn up to move the New York world financial center to Pittsburgh, or will they make a feckless attempt to build multi-billion dollar seawalls to delay the inevitable? Most likely schemes will be hatched, but the money will be diverted to the endless chain of crises until the money and will to resist is exhausted.

I don't see how any government will stand past mid century in its present form and once the thin lines of authority break down, expect all hell to turn loose.

[Ibon]

Here is a thought to contemplate.

When a species is in overshoot and vulnerable to environmental disruptions the question of whether these disruptions are human caused or from some other reason really becomes more and more irrelevant since we have already reached a critical mass on the planet where we can no longer change the model we are trapped in.

The lack of alternative habitats to occupy makes the question of the source of disruptions irrelevant.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'H')ere is a thought to contemplate.

When a species is in overshoot and vulnerable to environmental disruptions the question of whether these disruptions are human caused or from some other reason really becomes more and more irrelevant since we have already reached a critical mass on the planet where we can no longer change the model we are trapped in.

The lack of alternative habitats to occupy makes the question of the source of disruptions irrelevant.

[americandream]

Here's a little story sort of connected with overshoot.

I was an infant in Natal, South Africa when the communists took over in Mozambique (my family were also South African communists). They instituted free education, health AND family planning where they encouraged women to take ownership of their bodies (Ethiopia was very active in egalitarian reform at the time..wouldn't think it now, huh. Thanks to that old fart Kissinger).

The West started a guerilla war, installed a right wing pro-business government which promptly reversed the progressive reforms and reverted to older feudal values. (This has gone on all over the Third World.) So I ask, which came first...the overshoot or the capitalist system which needs the numbers?

Attempts to remedy overshoot in the midst of a system that needs the numbers is a wasted cause.

[americandream]

They are, as we speak, weaving the rope they will hang themselves by.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'I') don't think we'll have to wait very long. There will be some pretty dramatic effects due to climate change well before mid century which will prove to be devastating to both the world economy and human life.

For instance, just my one example from a previous post, with regards to SLR affecting the 5.5 million people that live in the greater Miami area. It won't take 3 m of sea rise to make Miami the next Atlantis. It will be a ghost town long before that. The area is only about 6 ft. above sea level now, but the earth beneath the inhabited coastline is highly permeable. Already "king tides" are washing across the streets bordered by all those high rise condos and Art Deco facades. It is even now inundating the ground water and corroding the infrastructure. By 2030 people will be moving away in droves having lost all their property value. Like Detroit, only worse. Abandoned buildings, crumbling bridges and roads. A trillion dollars in assets suddenly worthless.

Now comes the problem, what to do with all those refugees? No jobs, no money, no prospects. Will they become squatters where they can find a place, breeding disease and hunger?

This of course will not be happening in an isolated bubble, but in other parts of the country along the coasts and around the world. And this is only SLR, what about chaotic weather events pushing the extremes of drought and floods? At the same time food and water scarcity will be high on every country's agenda.

In 2050 will there be plans drawn up to move the New York world financial center to Pittsburgh, or will they make a feckless attempt to build multi-billion dollar seawalls to delay the inevitable? Most likely schemes will be hatched, but the money will be diverted to the endless chain of crises until the money and will to resist is exhausted.

I don't see how any government will stand past mid century in its present form and once the thin lines of authority break down, expect all hell to turn loose.

[rollin]

Americandream has a valid point. Large forces are at work that stymie most efforts to positive change. The only problem with this locked up situation is that geophysical and natural forces will be the ones to sort things us, we will lose any semblance of control. Maybe we never had any real control to begin with.

[ralfy]

Related:

"The Power of Community"

http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php

[americandream]

Yeah. If McPherson is correct, we are already dead. I'm sort of going that way myself. It's a pretty intense time for me as I have split from another relationship and for the same reasons. My reality is coloured by my awareness of the hole we are digging for ourselves but most everyone else understandably wants the symbols of success. Increasingly so, even the greenies are moving to conformism. Politically, I am sort of done out....I don't hold out much hope for the future.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rollin', 'A')mericandream has a valid point. Large forces are at work that stymie most efforts to positive change. The only problem with this locked up situation is that geophysical and natural forces will be the ones to sort things us, we will lose any semblance of control. Maybe we never had any real control to begin with.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'H')ere is a thought to contemplate.

When a species is in overshoot and vulnerable to environmental disruptions the question of whether these disruptions are human caused or from some other reason really becomes more and more irrelevant since we have already reached a critical mass on the planet where we can no longer change the model we are trapped in.

The lack of alternative habitats to occupy makes the question of the source of disruptions irrelevant.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rollin', 'A')mericandream has a valid point. Large forces are at work that stymie most efforts to positive change. The only problem with this locked up situation is that geophysical and natural forces will be the ones to sort things us, we will lose any semblance of control. Maybe we never had any real control to begin with.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', ' ')Politically, I am sort of done out....I don't hold out much hope for the future.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', ' ')So I ask, which came first...the overshoot or the capitalist system which needs the numbers?

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dorlomin', 'M')y personal view is that climate change and environmental degradation will be problems for the 2070s and so on. The huge problem of the 2020s will be energy and the ongoing economic fall out of globalisation, the death of the western middle class consumers. By 2020 our national debts that we have used to shield us from the 07 economic collapse will start to become unsustainable.

[americandream]

The system plays on our basic makeup...the desire for food and shelter security...and then higher up that chain...the need to be loved, nurtured and validated....through creativity and community.

It isolates us, and then fills the void with marketable comfort. We are in a state of alienation in this stratified, polarised paradigm. Marx describes this state as the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society, because being a mechanistic part of a social class alienates a person from his and her humanity. The theoretic basis of alienation within the capitalist mode of production is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine his or her life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of himself as the director of his actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define his relationship with other people; and to own the things and use the value of the goods and services, produced with his labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in order to extract from the worker the maximal amount of surplus value, in the course of business competition among industrialists.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', ' ')So I ask, which came first...the overshoot or the capitalist system which needs the numbers?

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'Y')ou have to ask why were the masses so vulnerable to this message? Is it something inherently insidious to the capitalist model or is it the total lack of checks and balances of constraints having not passed through past bottlenecks that would have honed us to be more cautious to the seduction.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'T')he system plays on our basic makeup...the desire for food and shelter security...and then higher up that chain...the need to be loved, nurtured and validated....through creativity and community.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '
')I think it might be, instead, because we DID pass through such a bottleneck.

[AgentR11]

Not recent, before the dawn of agriculture. If I recall rightly it was a volcanic cause, and greatly reduced the number of humans.

chotto matte kudasai....

Looked up the name... "Toba"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

[americandream]

That is where you need to understand the nature of culture and social relations. For example, in primitive hunter gatherer societies it might have been considerd quite appropriate to eat human flesh. I would imagine dissenters would have been in the minority until the material conditions arose to make that particular tenet redundant.

Capitalism was a radical departure from feudalism and rule by inherited privilege. It was merit based. Going back in time, early socialism (tribes and such like) made way for forms of limited tenure. Each form has been an improvement on the one before...with capitalism...the Age of Reason has been employed in such fields as law and technology.

Capitalism however has a major flaw. It is global and its reach in terms of damage, is global. I would suggest that it is more or less guaranteed that capitalism will be replaced by a return to our old collectivisation...the ONLY PROVISO....climate destruction. And like McPherson, I reckon that clock is underway and ticking.

Who is to blame? History. After all, historical conditions gave it life, not some fiendish man sitting in a bank.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'T')he system plays on our basic makeup...the desire for food and shelter security...and then higher up that chain...the need to be loved, nurtured and validated....through creativity and community.

[vision-master]

I don't know, you people are startin' to sound like yer losen' yer marbles?